Green Eyes
by Reyka Sivao
Summary: He was forever chasing a phantom.


Author's Note: Story written for the Secret Coconut, a fic exchange promoted by the community Saint Seiya Super Fics Journal.

* * *

Green eyes.

Snape couldn't take his eyes off of the boy's.

He'd been told that they looked like his mother's, but…

As he stared looking over toward the eleven-year-olds at their first banquet, he knew that wasn't true.

They didn't just look like her eyes.

They _were _her eyes.

The boy looked up at him, full of suspicion and fear, and it was Lily looking at him.

The accusation in her eyes tore at him, and he hardened his heart in anger, telling himself over and over that it wasn't her, couldn't be her.

She was gone.

This boy was Potter's son, and for that he couldn't be forgiven.

Snape wished there could be a patronus to protect him from the force of her accusation…but there was nothing.

But still, he couldn't look away.

* * *

"_Expecto patronum,"_he whispered.

_I expect a protector._

But he didn't, not really.

It wasn't a protector those words conjured from the end of his wand.

He didn't need a protector. Not from _them_. The servants of the Dark Lord had other ways of avoiding harm at the deathly claws of the Dementors.

The swirling mist leapt to glowing life in front of him, and Snape closed his eyes.

Every time.

Every damn _time._

He forced his eyes open to see the graceful form of the doe in front of him, awaiting his command, and had to force his knees to keep him upright.

It was her.

But not her as she had been in life, defiant till the end.

No, this was nothing but a pale imitation of the woman he had known, less even than a ghost.

And worse, she was the doe to _his _stag.

That knife twisted in his gut, just as it had every single time since it had changed.

* * *

It had been a long time before he realized the truth, for the Dark Lord's servants very seldom had any use at all for such white magic.

But now he had need of it.

He pulled the words out of his memory, focused on the mental image of his acceptance into Slytherin, just as he always had in the past.

But this time, a different memory filled the void.

The little girl's red hair danced in the breeze as she made the flower open and close, and her eyes held a warmth that Snape had never before seen directed at him.

The end of his wand glowed with an unfamiliar light, and a form burst to life and sprinted around him.

Not the form he had been expecting.

A deer?

She circled him and came to a stop, gazing at him with her solid white eyes, and he knew.

The full force of what he had done hit him in the gut.

His knees weakened, and his wand clattered to the ground.

The doe vanished, and Snape slid to the floor.

* * *

"Mudblood!"

Their eyes locked, and Snape's mind froze.

_No!_

He wanted to shout, to take it back, to turn back time and snatch the word back before it could leave his lips.

But it was too late.

He could see her eyes, and that warmth he'd always counted on had already turned to coldness.

She turned her back, and Snape knew it was useless.

He should have apologized anyway.

He should have told her how sorry he was, even without any expectation of undeserved forgiveness.

But he didn't.

She walked away without looking back, and he let her go without a word, stung by the betrayal he knew was his.

She was dead to him.

* * *

Snape ran as he had never run before, hoping against hope that he was wrong.

He _had _to be wrong.

He had risked everything to keep this from happening.

The house was in tatters, but still he ran, taking the stairs as fast as the rubble would allow.

She had to be there…

The doorway stood open too wide, ripped into the torn wall.

Snape stood there too, staring in horror as the scene of his worst nightmare took shape before him.

His mouth opened. He couldn't hear anything in the deathly silence that had enveloped the world, but his grief poured out of him, all tears and breath and unheard sound.

She was gone.

How he managed to reach her, to lift her up off the cold floor, he never knew. All he knew was that she was in his arms, the way he'd wanted for so, so long.

But it wasn't her.

This was nothing but fate mocking him with this twisted, bitter mockery of his one wish.

Snape held Lily's empty body, rocking back and forth under the frightened green gaze of her son.

* * *

"Let me see your eyes."

Everything was fading to blank darkness around him, but the boy's green eyes shone like a beacon.

And then they were her eyes.

The agony of the snake's venom faded into the same nothingness that was taking his light, and the nothingness itself coalesced into the face of the woman he'd missed for so long.

_Lily,_he tried to say, but he had no mouth to move, no lips or tongue to form the words.

But she seemed to understand him anyway, as she became more real to him than anything had ever been.

He gazed into her green eyes, and the words he'd longed to say for so many years poured silently out of him.

_I'm so sorry, Lily. _

_Please…_

_Forgive me._


End file.
